


Scientist to Founder by Fifty Years
You've had the spark — a discovery, a technology, an insight that could reshape an entire industry.
But most breakthrough research never makes a real impact in the world. It stays in papers, gets buried in approval processes, or dies when funding runs out.
Alex Teng, Partner at Fifty Years, has helped hundreds of scientists and engineers transition from the lab bench to founding deep tech startups.
If you're a PhD, postdoc, or engineer curious about what it really takes to build a deep tech startup, this talk is for you. We'll cover how to identify if your research has commercial potential, navigate IP, choose the right team and market, iterate quickly, and grow into a great founder.
No fluff. Just unfiltered advice from our experience helping scientists and engineers go from idea to building companies like Plasmidsaurus (now delivering ultrafast sequencing to scientists globally) and Clippership (building autonomous sailboats to decarbonize maritime shipping).
Whether you're actively spinning out or just curious about deep tech entrepreneurship, see you at Bakar Labs! Good food and great conversations guaranteed.
—
At Fifty Years, we’ve built deep tech companies ourselves. We’ve backed over 100 deep tech companies from the earliest stages and helped them raise over $4.6 billion. This includes companies like Solugen (makes carbon-negative chemicals, now a $2B company), Astranis (delivering internet to billions of people via satellites, now a $1.4B company), and Opentrons (low-cost lab robots, now a $1.8B company).
We've distilled everything we know about deep tech entrepreneurship into 5050, a free program to help great scientists and engineers become great founders.